The Outlier: How a Pancreatic Cancer Survivor Is Turning His Survival Into Science

Advocacy at Work · Sep 10, 2026 · 39m

The first symptom was acidity in his stomach.

Yann Bizien was living a standard life in Paris in 2017. Software industry. Account manager. Selling solutions to enterprise. A four-year-old daughter. Pretty much standard health. He wasn’t the kind of guy who went to doctors. He did a little bit of sports. He had a healthy life.

Then came the stomach acidity. It increased. And one day he couldn’t eat anymore.

In 2017, at age 35, the diagnosis came back: stage 4 pancreatic cancer.

“Even the word cancer was not possible to associate this with my life,” he tells me. “It was a shock.”

Most people…